Posted on 04/21/2025 10:52:00 AM PDT by John Semmens
Former Secretary of the Treasury during Biden's presidency Janet Yellen called Trump's efforts to revitalize America's manufacturing capabilities "a pipe dream. Not only will it not happen, it's not even a desirable goal. America has entered a post-industrial phase. Generation Z quite sensibly rejects the idea of having to work for a living. We won't have the workforce needed to run complex industrial output in another 20 years."
"In contrast, China has millions of workers willing to accept extraordinarily low wages," Yellen contended. "Why not let them do the work making products so Americans can concentrate on consuming them? China will buy our debt. This will supply the funds needed to purchase their output. We'd essentially be freed from the whole work-to-eat treadmill that has intruded on human leisure since the start of the industrial revolution."
"Another overlooked benefit de-industrialization is that the total interdependence of this arrangement will pave the way to a lasting peace between us and China," Yellen predicted. "Since an indolent America would be incapable of defending itself China would no longer need armaments. This ugly burden of a fragmented world would evaporate. A unified single world nation would finally have the time to achieve the edenic society envisioned by Karl Marx. Trump will probably never admit it, but individuals will own nothing a be happier than they ever have been since civilization first began."
Not really satire John. But kudos to you for this gem.
Brilliant!
T-shirts no. The modern stuff? You tell me.
Textiles need to come back to the USA. All of it must come back. ALL OF IT.
Is there any problem with competing with South Korea, Japan, Germany for high tech manufacturing jobs?
Maybe more tech and vocational programs and less Queer Studies.
STEM workers are on the high IQ end of the spectrum. In fact, they are so smart they see globalists selling out the STEM workforce through immigration visas making it a tough career choice that will be dicey at best. So stop that and you get more domestic STEM workers. Get it?
Big economic factions in the United States have zero vision & want a continuation of the unsustainable status quo.
They’re going to lose a lot of money over the next decade, while businesses that “get ahead of the curve” will increase their future profitable.
“It’s just a matter of time.”
I know this article is satire; however, couldn’t resist the chance to kick Janet, the lovely and stupid treasury gnome.
She knows about as much about monetary matters as a sow knows about lipstick.
Does anyone else see why Yellen should never have been elevated to Secretary of the Treasury. Also, under her watch, $5 trillion were paid out but no records kept of who it was paid to or why. She should be brought to trial for malfeasance.
Bob Noyce at Intel tried to setup SemiTech back in the 80’s to bring chip manufacturing back to the USA.
It cost him his life at 62.
I was there when the news came out at Intel.
That day a great light went out.
Apparently her Majesty Janet Yellen has not seen the FaceBook posts about how normal Americans are trying to make full-time middle-class incomes out of delivering sandwiches and pizzas to people who basically have to decide to pay $40-50 to have a $20 hamburger delivered.
Or the 30% increase in number of people coming to local food pantries to get something to supplement their minimum-wage paychecks.
How long has it been since Janet Yellen has been out among the normal people who make up most of the voting public? Sounds like it's been a while.
And people are wondering why our stock market has corrected from Biden era valuations.
First my view is based on being a professional engineer for over 50 years (understanding a lot about manufacturing) and a lengthy discussion I had in China a few years ago with a man who owned a low voltage electrical connector manufacturing company that exported to the US and the EU.
First manufacturing is not one size fits all. When one talks about manufacturing on an assembly line basis there are basically three types. The one I think that this article refers to is the use of low cost workers to perform highly variable assembly work. The second type is the other extreme, which is totally automated manufacturing. Think of bottling plants, or factories that manufacture screws or bolts. This involves virtually no labor for the assembly, but highly skilled labor for quality control, programming, and machines maintenance. The third type of manufacturing involves a lot of similar assemblies, but with some variations. This is usually used for things such as automobiles and is performed mostly by robotics. Again, very little low skills required for mostly moving parts and moving assembled products; but high skills for robot programming and maintenance.
One of the things I learned in China was that the “low wage” labor that helped found much of China's manufacturing is no longer “low wage.” That work and that manufacturing had (as of a few years ago) been transferred to factories in Vietnam, Thailand, etc.
So China is going to be loosing low wage and low skill manufacturing jobs to other countries.
Now the question is can the US regain manufacturing jobs? The answer is sort of. Robotic or in the alternative fully automated manufacturing can be brought back to the USA and the jobs associated with that. However, that will not be the 1960’s automotive assembly line types of jobs. Instead it will be machine programming, quality control, technical equipment maintenance jobs. So there will be less of them but they will pay very well........for those with the skills to perform them.
Now the critical issue is the American Education system. Will the American Education system produce math/statistic/programming skilled workers needed to the two more automated manufacturing systems? I am not sure it can and I do not see tax benefits for employers to invest heavily in educating and training their employees. This worker education challenge is what China and the US will face to bring back manufacturing jobs. The cost of US labor will always be much higher than 3rd world countries. That means hand assembly manufacturing jobs will likely never return in high numbers to the USA.
Pharmaceuticals, appliances, electronics....
Janet Yellen cannot be this dumb but she is.
She was in Africa last year and was meeting with villagers next to their straw huts talking about how they can affect climate change...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.